News & Letters: Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2006 - 2007

We aim to help fill the void on the question of "what happens after" by creatively rethinking and restating his concept of "revolution in permanence" for today.

Abstract: Excerpt:Despite the interest shown by many youth today in working out a comprehensive alternative to capitalism, the prevailing tendency of radical thought is to stop dead at the political form of decision-making as the determinant to creating a new society-as if the question of "what happens after" the revolution can be answered without grappling with the difficult problem of how a revolution can transcend the capitalist law of value....No new society can arise without freely associated relations of production and in society as a whole. But masses of people want to know what SPECIFIC relations of production and society need to be transformed in a way that can enable humanity to fundamentally break from value production. We must address that question and not stop dead before it.No one has a crystal ball as to how to create the social relations that Marx outlined as needed in the aftermath of a social revolution. Neither a program nor a blueprint can bring it into reality. But the radical movement has greatly suffered from failing to take off from and further develop the principles outlined in Marx's CRITIQUE OF THE GOTHA PROGRAM. This has left a void that is being filled by false alternatives like market socialism, statism or anarchism. None can answer the pressing question of whether humanity can be free from capitalist value production, racism, sexism, and dehumanized, thingified relations of everyday life.

We aim to help fill the void on the question of "what happens after" by creatively rethinking and restating his concept of "revolution in permanence" for today, and by making Marx's CRITIQUE OF THE GOTHA PROGRAM our ground for organization. In taking this as our core organizational perspective, we seek to get others thinking about these concepts by going to their meetings, writing to their publications, and engaging in dialog with all whom we can reach.